Profile
~Uni Kassel -~~

Uni Kassel -
UX, design, frontend and TYPO3 for the university and its departments

The Initial Situation

Founded in 1971, the University of Kassel is characterised above all by its diverse and interdisciplinary research and teaching. The profile includes, among other things, the focus on environmental, climate and energy research, nanostructure sciences and educational research as well as fine arts.

On its website, the University of Kassel provides comprehensive information about its degree programmes, departments and institutes as well as about its research, life in Kassel and much more. The website comprises thousands of pages, grouped into sub-websites - e.g. for the departments - each with up to four separate navigation levels and numerous design and content formats.


Our Task

The complexity resulting from the many contents and sub-websites and their respective different focuses was the great challenge of this project.

  • The focus was on the development of a new responsive design based on the Atomic design.
  • For the migration of all content, it had to be ensured that every previous element in the old design found a counterpart in the new one.
  • On a conceptual level, it was important to better understand the various target groups and their needs. These included prospective students, applicants, students, academics and staff.
  • In the future, users should be guided to the content that suits them as clearly and quickly as possible.
  • Last but not least, the University of Kassel wanted advice and support in revising central content to suit the target group and search engines. Since there are about 1,500 employees authorised to edit across the sub-websites, training courses had to be organised for large numbers of participants. 

Implementation & further development

  • We developed six well-founded personas, representing the most important target groups, so it was easy to put ourselves in the users' shoes right from the start.
  • With the help of our target group matrix, which relates content and personas to each other, the weighting and prioritisation of the different contents could be simplified considerably in order to achieve the goals set for the website as well as possible.
  • Starting from our basic design, we further developed the screen design together with the University of Kassel. The focus here was on the use of fine lines, which are typical for the Uni Kassel CD, as well as coloured areas to highlight particularly important information. 
  • We developed the frontend based on the CSS framework Bootstrap. We implemented numerous specific adaptations in order to meet the high demands of the educational sector and the accessibility requirements of the website in equal measure.
  • Since the launch of the umbrella site, we have continuously supported the University of Kassel in the further development of its website.
Responsive views of the website of the University of Kassel.
Tidy navigation menu, target group and topic entries on the homepage.
The editorially configurable newswall extension

Steckbrief

  • URL: https://www.uni-kassel.de
  • Kunde: Universität Kassel
  • Branche: Universität
  • Umsetzung: Launch der Dachseite im Juni 2018, fortlaufende Weiterentwicklung, Launch der Studiengänge 2020/21
  • Technologie: Bootstrap 4, HTML5 / CSS, Jenkins
  • Leistungen: UX-Beratung, Konzeption, Design, responsive Frontend-Umsetzung, Einrichtung eines Build-Prozesses 
News